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Long time Lurker, First time Blogger

by CdnGater · 11/01/2006 (9:27 am) · 14 comments

Well, I have been an owner of TGE since 2004 and I have never blogged. Why? Guess I never really had much to say I thought other people would be interested in. I've been active on the forums and submitted the occasional resource, but nothing really spectacular.

So I have been working on a game for a long time, off and on. Since TGE 1.5 has come out, I have been slowly porting stuff over and making things better than before for myself.

Anyway, while going trough TGE examples I ran across the rain storm in small forest mission. Thought, dam, that looks cool but something is missing... Moving trees!!

Looked into SpeedTree, ack $3000 for license. Na, I need something cheaper. So I have been working on a simplified version that I am impressed with for results. Hence I have something to share with others.

Here is a reference video from the original mission.

Reference Video

Ok, here is a new shot with my new mod

Branch Sway Video


And last one, let's turn up the storm and let the trunks sway as well.

Branch & Trunk Sway Video

Once I have finished tweaking the code, and come up with some more samples, I'll probably develop a cheap mod pack as I am sure other people can have fun with it as well.

Well, that's the end of this blog, probably another 2 years until the next one, who knows.
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Torque Owner Benoit Touchette
#1
11/01/2006 (9:37 am)
That looks really nice, especially the swaying trees.

Torque 3D Owner dsfsd
#2
11/01/2006 (9:39 am)
Wow, that's pretty cool!

Torque 3D Owner Matt Huston
Atomic Banzai Games
#3
11/01/2006 (10:13 am)
Looks very nice :) Hope it's not 2 years before your next blog.

Torque 3D Owner Adam
Adam deGrandis
#4
11/01/2006 (10:44 am)
This is pretty freaking cool. :)

...
#5
11/01/2006 (11:32 am)
Yeah the trees didnt fit the scene when they were static.
Now it looks fantastic ! nice work ;)

Torque Owner Steve Adamson
#6
11/01/2006 (1:25 pm)
I will say it looks great :) One little thing I noticed, is how the pine tree sways WAY too much.

Other than that one little ittttyyyyy bittttty tree sway issue. Awesome man.

Take care.

Torque 3D Owner Kenneth Holst
Default Studio Name
#7
11/01/2006 (1:36 pm)
That looks great Simon!

Torque Owner CdnGater
Duggan Software Studio
#8
11/01/2006 (2:00 pm)
@Steve - Yeh it sways too much, but it is parameter driven. I'm just trying to get the code and models to work as expected before I start fine tuning parameters like sway.

@All - Thanks for the great comments

Torque Owner Mario N. Bonassin
#9
11/01/2006 (2:27 pm)
i like this alot. Will it be able to simulate wind direction? or is it mostly random directions?

Torque 3D Owner Josef Rogovsky
#10
11/01/2006 (2:29 pm)
This definitely adds an extra bit of realism. Great work!

Torque Owner CdnGater
Duggan Software Studio
#11
11/01/2006 (2:34 pm)
@Mario - it actualy takes in wind direction right now, but it's not 100 percent correct yet. Also want to take in the wind speed.

I also think I am going to split my parameters up between the branches and trunks so that they can be controlled sperately.

As I said, its still work in process. Want to add LOD to the trees, may end up adding a tree editor yet, but if I do, thats way in the future.

Torque 3D Owner Max
#12
11/01/2006 (5:01 pm)
It looks really cool.

But I need to say that your trunk swaying is a little too exaggerated. Maybe just lightening the rotation of the trees, and It would be awesome.

Torque Owner kingkong
#13
02/05/2007 (11:47 am)
wow!! it looks really amzing.

Torque Owner Sean Oosterveen
#14
07/29/2007 (10:26 pm)
Simon, if you ever read this, I havent seen anything else from you on this awesome resource. I am looking for some way to make trees sway in my own game without paying $10k for speedtree. If you are at all interested in making some money on this system, please contact me at sao[at]the13thhour.net or my MSN seanoosterveen[at]hotmail.com Thanks!